Latour is determined to build a cathedral in Santa Fe. He is encouraged by Don Antonio Olivares.
Olivares’s second wife, Dona Isabella, has Europeanized her husband, entertains lavishly, is a devout Catholic, and irritates her in-laws. Quick-spirited, vain, gracious, younger than her husband, and still physically attractive, she inspires gossip. The French priests enjoy conversations with her in their native tongue. In her home, they can discuss the outside world and music.
Don Antonio is heavy and slow. He has lively eyes with a yellow spark and golden brown fingers. He knows the priests well. He gives to Latour things that are pleasing to the eye; to Vaillant he gives things that are pleasing to the taste.
Inez, the Olivares’s only daughter, visits them and casts a somber spell over the household. At a New Year’s party, Olivares promises to give enough money so Latour can build his cathedral. Attending the party are Kit Carson, his daughter, officers from the fort, and Don Manuel Chavez. All are colorfully dressed. Vaillant wears a cassock that has been sent by his sister’s convent. At first, Latour frowned on such rich garments, but after he had visited the convent and had seen what it meant for the nuns to sew and dream of New World missions, he changed his mind.
The boy, Pablo, plays his guitar for the party. Latour contemplates how each man in the room has become his own story. Carson is the trail breaker. Chavez, who had hunted Navajos for sport in his youth, was in a group that was ambushed by Indians, killing every member of the party except himself. Mistaken for dead with seven arrow wounds and a shaft through his body, he traveled to safety.
Later that year, Olivares dies, and his brothers rush to get American lawyers to gain his inheritance.
